Writing Lisp is intensely satisfying in a way that’s hard to describe. Doing anything complicated in a functional language gets painful earlier, so you’re forced to abstract away complexity with less conscious effort than it takes in an object-oriented one. There are fewer temptations to design beyond realistic needs, and no importing of a design pattern’s attendant conceptual baggage or latent constraints, which can end up becoming hazardous in the long run. The syntax lets you focus on the heart of your problem. Compared to especially expressive languages, there’s no cognitive overhead from needing to choose between three or four different ways to express the same logic. Everything leans hard in the direction of simplicity.